Fifteen years ago, before the war

Fifteen years ago, on the night of August 8, 2008, the war broke out in South Ossetia, followed by a Russian peace enforcement operation. In fact, the first, but, as it turned out, not the last open armed conflict between the post-Soviet countries, in which Russia participated.

Both then and now, the optics through which the conflict was observed both in Moscow and in the West was, to put it mildly, flawed. Many things and phenomena were not what they seemed. Perhaps in some cases the distortion was due to the desire to see the world better than it is, but in the end it contributed to the conflict rather than its resolution.

First of all, it seemed to many in Moscow and in the West that Russia’s entry into the war was unthinkable, and when it happened, it came as a shock. The author of these lines spent a lot of time on journalistic business trips to South Ossetia, on the evening of August 7, for several hours, following from the editorial office the meetings of the mixed control commission (the so-called trilateral Ossetian-Georgian-Russian peacekeeping instrument), which analyzed the latest facts of the opening of fire by both sides, and was sure that by morning the result would be a binding decision on a general cease-fire. And the morning caught us all at war: from midnight, Georgian MLRS began to hit Tskhinvali, but the European colleagues who called me among the first ones thought that the Russian leadership had gone crazy, having moved units of the 58th Army through the Roki Pass. And even when the first shock had passed, the “five-day war” of August 2008 and the subsequent recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were perceived in the West (and partly in Moscow) as an excess of the Russian leadership.

Perception errors piled on top of each other, reproduced themselves – all the more convincingly because they were fueled, among other things, by expert knowledge. For example, there was (and still is) a widespread point of view in the West that South Ossetia and Abkhazia from the very beginning – or rather, almost from the late 1980s – were Russian “crypto-colonies”, a political manipulation directed against Georgian independence.

The very fact that Moscow, Tskhinval, Sukhum and Tbilisi belonged to one common state before 1991 did not seem to interfere with such an interpretation, just as it does not interfere with interpretations of the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv now.

The inhabitants of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as it were, were excluded from such a description of reality as an independent subject – it was very convenient to consider their unwillingness to live in the Georgian state as “induced” from the outside and to explain it by the “evil will” of Moscow. Now the inhabitants of Crimea and Donbass are put in the same position, refusing to associate themselves with Ukraine: they are not visible from Kyiv or from the West at point-blank range.

In relation to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, this interpretation was partly based on the history of political confrontation in the late USSR, where Mikhail Gorbachev, trying by any means to weaken the heads of the union republics gaining political weight, actually proposed that the autonomies that were part of them equalize in status with the republics and move along with them towards the signing of a new union treaty, which was supposed to save the Union by re-establishing it. In this sense, Moscow really turned out to be one of the co-authors, but rather an ideological sponsor of the separation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia. But speaking of this, it is easy to forget that at that moment a dual power was rapidly forming in Moscow: Moscow was both the capital of the USSR and the capital of Russia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia, convincingly voting in a referendum in March 1991 for the preservation of the USSR, were guided by the union authorities, and Boris Yeltsin, who came to Kazbegi to meet with Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was considered a traitor.

When the Soviet Union was gone, neither South Ossetia nor Abkhazia wanted to join Georgia, as they probably would have if their desire for independence from Georgia was only the result of Moscow’s political manipulation. In both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the Georgian authorities tried to resolve the issue by force, as a result of which Russia was forced to send a peacekeeping contingent to the zones of both conflicts and patiently be the general sponsor of peacekeeping for many years, while some politicians in Georgia interpreted these efforts as occupation.

It was a mistake to think that Russia would not recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, guided by something like Chinese logic: not to support separatism and irredentism anywhere outside its borders, so as not to create an inspiring example for potential secessionists inside.

Similarly, it is a mistake to think that the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is Russia’s alleged response to Western recognition of Kosovo. The situation in Russia’s own North Caucasus was not the most favorable for any kind of demonstrations: 2008 was only three years behind the last major militant operation (attack to Nalchik, 2005) and four – from the year that almost became fatal for the North Caucasus: in 2004, militants attacked on Ingushetia, they almost recaptured Grozny from the federal army on the eve of the presidential elections in Chechnya, President Akhmat-Khadji Kadyrov, elected there died as a result of a terrorist attack, and in September happened hostage tragedy in Beslan.

Nevertheless, Russia accepted the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, having turned out to be the only guarantor of their military security following the five-day war. Despite the almost daily accusations of occupation, until now Russia has never shown any intention to reconsider this decision in the direction of closer integration of the republics, including after the annexation of Crimea and new territories in Ukraine.

Disagreements over the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are a stumbling block in Russian-Georgian relations: any steps the countries take towards each other ends where talks about status begin. Nevertheless, this does not mean that these steps end before they start: there is an intensive exchange of goods between the countries, there are common business projects, Russian tourists go to Georgia as willingly as in the fall of 2022 did those who sought to avoid partial mobilization. The Sochi Olympics in 2014 (six years after the war) could not help but require prompt cooperation between Russian and Georgian security forces, and it was not hindered by attempts by a part of the Georgian politicians to activate the issue of the Circassian genocide in the Russian Empire for the Games.

In the current situation, the Georgian establishment is split according to the criterion of attitude towards Russia and its actions in Ukraine, and yet there are still enough political forces in the country that are striving to avoid freezing relations.

In the same way, Russia retains an interest in maintaining the status quo, not succumbing to periodic calls from South Ossetia to equalize its status with Crimea.

Finally, it was a mistake to see excesses in the Russian decisions of August 2008. Now, after the annexation of Crimea and against the backdrop of a special operation in the Donbass, only a blind person can fail to see the sequence. One can look for its starting point in Vladimir Putin’s Munich speech in 2007, caused, among other things, by an enthusiastic discussion in the West of the immediate NATO prospects for Georgia and Ukraine. Actually, taking into account these declarations of intent, back in 2008, the surprise of Western observers, expressed on the morning of August 8 and beyond, meant either hypocrisy or an inability to perceive any point of view other than one’s own.

Political history, in which, generally speaking, it is harmful to delve into the process of conflict resolution, because all conflicts are different, and each step of each side is most often due to the previous step of the opponent, gives us the opportunity to look further into the eventful 1991. While agreeing to the dismantling of the Union and being one of its participants, Russia nevertheless was not going to recognize itself as a silent and indifferent observer of the transition of its closest neighbors to associations and unions, of which it itself is not a member. On August 24, 1991, three days after the failure of the GKChP coup attempt, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR adopted the Act of Declaration of Independence. In Russia, they were too busy with their own affairs, connected with the almost landslide destruction of the allied control structures.

Nevertheless, on August 27, Rossiyskaya Gazeta published a short commentary by Presidential Press Secretary Pavel Voshchanov: “The Russian Federation does not question the constitutional right of every state and people to self-determination. However, there is a problem of borders, the unsettledness of which is possible and admissible only in the presence of allied relations fixed by the relevant treaty. In the event of their termination, the RSFSR reserves the right to raise the issue of revising the borders. The above applies to all neighboring republics, with the exception of the three Baltic republics, whose state independence has already been recognized by Russia, which confirms the solution of the territorial problem in bilateral relations.

Of course, this is just the case when the quote is “pulled out of context” by a number of further decisions. It would, perhaps, be a stretch and an overgeneralization to consider the conflicts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea and Donbass as parts of a whole. From the outskirts of Tskhinval in 2008, the Russian command definitely did not distinguish the Azovstal skyline. Even the geographically close and almost synchronous South Ossetian and Abkhaz situations differ in detail to a degree that makes generalizations questionable.

But without 2008, there would probably be no 2014 or 2022. And if so, then it would be worth taking a closer look at the details, and taking into account the mistakes.

Especially if you really want to understand the conflict and achieve its resolution, and not reduce everything to the problem of ethical choice of a side in a fictional world where absolute good opposes absolute evil, where the collapse of the USSR supposedly ended peacefully once and for all with the export of Soviet nuclear weapons from the former Soviet republics to Russia , and any Russian attempt to revise the conditions and framework that have taken shape after this collapse is an excess, unacceptable revisionism and generally unacceptable behavior. The world does not have to be what it seems to you, even if you have achieved great success in it. Only it is enough for children to close their eyes so as not to see what is dangerous, unpleasant or simply not pleasant for them.